With this blog, I am planning to offer, as regularly as possible, critical observations on the scholarly and popular literature analyzing the nature of archives or contributing to our understanding of archives in society. I hope this blog will be of assistance to anyone, especially faculty and graduate students, interested in understanding archives and their importance to society.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Material Culture and Records (Or, Having Some Fun)

There has been sporadic attention paid to the material culture dimensions about how records are created, carried, and stored. Years ago, Thomas Schlereth, a pioneering material culture specialist, wrote a number of essays looking at office furniture. The engineering scholar Henry Petroski has written effectively about devices like pencils, paper clips, and post-it notes. The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. some years ago staged a wonderful exhibition on the evolution of the modern office that was replete with insights about how file cabinets, new office technologies, and other similar features transformed the nature of how records were utilized in these offices. We need a lot more work on the artifacts reflecting modern recordkeeping systems, from the Wooten desk to the ubiquitous portable data device now dangling from the ears of many office workers.

I believe that the desks, cabinets, shelves, wallets, purses, and other such devices can tell us a lot about the evolving nature of records and recordkeeping systems. As a result, I am always on the hunt for new reading material about this topic. Sometimes, anything remotely related to it will offer enough insights to make the reading worthwhile.

Winifred Gallagher’s amusing and chatty little book on purses – It’s in the Bag: What Purses Reveal – and Conceal (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), ISBN-10: 0-06-113748-0, caught my eye in a stroll through a neighborhood, independent bookstore. I have read a number of other books by freelance writer Gallagher, including her books on the “power of place” and “house thinking,” and I have always enjoyed her insights, writing style, and subject matter. However, if it weren’t for my instance in the potential for carrying documents possessed by purses, I must admit I might have found it difficult to get through her most recent book (since I don’t carry a purse, hang out in stores selling them, or fully understand why my wife needs as many as she owns).

Gallagher provides a brief, popular history of the evolution of the handbag, focusing on the development of interest in high-end designer bags and why women seek them out, what I guess is popularly referred to as “It bags” (a new term for me). Gallagher describes this high fashion handbag as being to “fashion what the iPod is to music. Each object is a beautiful container that marries form and function, a kind of generic art object that its owner personalizes and regards almost as a body part. Like the iPod, the It bag is a small package that delivers a lot of information about its owner and the twenty-first-century metropolitan way of life” (p. xi). The information associated with the handbag is both what it conveys as an object and what it can hold. The latter is what interests me most.

The author provides a breezy informal analysis of the purse. For example, Gallagher remarks that “from a historical perspective, the luxury bag’s high profile reflects the profound change in women’s status and income” (p. 11). I wonder if there is any relationship between the same social status and the contents of the handbags?

It’s in the Bag includes a lot of information about the fashion industry and the making and marketing of these bags (and the celebrities and designers who carry what), more information than I was interested in (although I love the retro-60’s illustrations depicting the purses). Gallagher also provides commentary on those who collect these bags, and the second-hand trade flourishing in New York and other places in order to keep those who want such items amply supplied. Fakes and reproductions are also part of this as well.

What I am most interested in is what Gallagher refers to as the most prevalent reason we like certain handbags: “The most obvious reason why we bond with a certain everyday thing, such as a handbag, is that it fulfills a necessary function, such as carrying our stuff” (p.65). Gallagher ascribes our attraction to such objects as everything from being like a child’s security blanket to a reflection of “our increasingly materialistic, highly mobile, socially disconnected society” (p. 67). Of course, I want to know more about whether a handbag is targeted for its ability to carry various PDAs, cell phones, and laptops, but I didn’t learn much about this. Gallagher says she learned a lot about how a “simple possession – one of life’s little things – can become a partner in a silent but rewarding relationship. Whether it’s transporting my stuff, expressing my taste, preserving a memory, or cheering up a bad day, my bag now seems . . . not just a thing, but also a small part of who I am” (p. 100). I wanted to know more about the implications of these little things for records and recordkeeping matters, but this book only whetted my appetite for better understanding this – but, hey, this was a fun read and a good start for thinking about one aspect of the material culture affecting archives.

1 Comments:

What I love about bags is the "potential" they hold for the storage of ones personal belongings and making them portable. I agree with the author in that for many women, bags serve a functional purpose but at the same time, allows for self expression. Women have bags for every season, occasion or sometimes for every outfit!Many handbags are now being made with cases to store cell phones or even iPods. The cases are often sold separately and are used as a fashion statement in and of themselves. Of course, the fashion conscious will go for the more expensive models. The selling of accessories for electronic gadgets, especially the iPod and other MP3 players, is a HUGE business. These accessories, with their trendy designs, promise the buyer the ability to express him/herself. This need for self expression seems to come out of the fact that these gadgets/communication technologies/record-keeping devices are mass produced and look almost exactly the same. Another interesting thing to look into would be the aspect of the design of the gadgets themselves and what they say about us as a society. Along with the advent of the laptop has come the advent of the laptop case, which is used a lot for business and academic record keeping and creating purposes. Rare now is the bulky and hard briefcase. So that has been one recent change in how we store and manage records. I have even seen advertisements in magazines for "designer" laptop cases for women, which I suppose are supposed to set them apart from the plain, black laptop cases.

About Me

Richard J. Cox is Professor in Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Information Sciences where he is responsible for the archives concentration in the Master's in Library Science degree and the Ph.D. degree. He has been a member of the Society of American Archivists Council from 1986 through 1989. Dr. Cox also served as Editor of the American Archivist from 1991 through 1995, the Society’s Publications Editor from 2002 to 2006, and he is presently editor of the Records & Information Management Report. He has written extensively on archival and records management topics and has published fourteen books in this area, winning the Society’s Waldo G. Leland Award in 1991, 2002, and 2005. He is presently working on new books on professional education and personal recordkeeping. Dr. Cox was elected a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists in 1989.